Nowaday names don't mean much

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by peverett

I sometimes think that our memories about quality are a bit selective. I have a four year old Toshiba color tv that has given me no trouble. I had a Mitsibishi for 14 years prior to that that worked fine until a lightning bolt got it. My mother had a Korean(Goldstar, I think) made color TV that lasted 12 years without trouble. How many of the 1960s tvs, especially color TVs, could boast this kind of service? The cabinets are not as nice as back then, but the electronics are far better. How many of us like the crappy wafer tuners from the 1960s which never worked correctly after a year or two. These were even used by Zenith in some sets.

I enjoy restoring the old TVs and radios to working condition, but am the first to admit modern electronics is far better.

Rather an unfair comparison don't you think? I should hope that reliability would improve as electronics moved to low-heat solid-state, ICs, and so forth. Actually, when you consider that the last of the "true" Zenith sets (Chromacolor/System 3) are in some cases over 30 y/o and still produce a sharp, clear picture that rivals or exceeds many new CRT sets, I would say the bar hasn't been moved very far.

If those same engineers were designing sets today, thirty-years later, we would already have compatible HDTV and for all I can guess, smell-o-vision!

Instead we have commodity-type sets that work pretty decent, but don't excel in quality, or advancing the state of the art.

[Chad Hauris]

The state of the art has been advanced though with flat panel type sets, DLP, hard disk video recorders etc. 25 years ago these kind of sets were still just science fiction...even with their shortcomings there has been a lot of advances in TV technology and I do think they are continuing to improve them.

The thing about most modern electronics is that most of it does work very well and often for a long time before needing major repairs, however it is difficult/expensive to repair them due to cheaper construction, specialized custom-made parts, etc.

[tgunner]

What would you rather have? A 60's style $400 new set that needs $50-100 repairs every 5 years to keep going, or a $250 modern set that goes 10-15 years without issues? I personally take the $250 one, even if it must be sent to the re-cycler after those 10-15 years.

[oldtvman]

Originally Posted by peverett

One that is still around that is a bit supprising is the Hoffman TV people(Easy Vision).

http://www.hoffmanvideo.com/aboutus.asp

Of course, they do not manufacture TVs anymore.

One of my radio friends said this about Philco:
"The quality fell out before the name went on" Fitting for the 1960s GE tvs also.

I sometimes think that our memories about quality are a bit selective. I have a four year old Toshiba color tv that has given me no trouble. I had a Mitsibishi for 14 years prior to that that worked fine until a lightning bolt got it. My mother had a Korean(Goldstar, I think) made color TV that lasted 12 years without trouble. How many of the 1960s tvs, especially color TVs, could boast this kind of service? The cabinets are not as nice as back then, but the electronics are far better. How many of us like the crappy wafer tuners from the 1960s which never worked correctly after a year or two. These were even used by Zenith in some sets.

I enjoy restoring the old TVs and radios to working condition, but am the first to admit modern electronics is far better.

One final comment is that a modern piece of consumer electonics equipment is just ike the cars mentioned by doctorbongo. The components come from all over, including the US, no matter where the company headquarters are.

I have never questioned the reliability issue, but rather the difference between different manufacturers of color sets back in the 50's and 60's, of course any solid state device would run cooler than it's tube based counter-parts, but beyond that once you got past the RCA and Zenith brands back then both picture quality and set design were sometimes questionable.

Back then you could cover up everything but the picture and the color and tint controls and for the most part I could tell by the performance what kind of design it was ie: Zenith, Rca based technology or Magnavox and so on.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by bgadow

I have a hard time thinking of any major American consumer electronics makers still kicking...

Looking around the room I see 4 black & white portables from the mid-60s. GE, Philco, Setchell-Carlson, Zenith.

Setchell-Carlson changed its name to Audiotronics about 1980, and to Dotronix in the late 80's or early 1990's, and they still make video monitors, here in the USA:

www.dotronix.com

Their monitors are still used in airport video display systems around the country, for example. Several years ago, right after Zenith (the then last-existing U.S. consumer TV maker) was bought by LG, Dotronix briefly got some attention when they discussed selling consumer TV sets/monitors, but they never did release any that I am aware of.

[bigolds98]

My friends and I talk about this all the time. There is nothing classic or good anymore. I remember when people bought RCA, Curtis Mathis, and Radio Flier wagons. The list is now endless, because they were American Icons and were known as a quality product. I saw a show on Wal-mart and how they have been the biggest destructor of the Made In America name. Anyway on that show they showed this TV company in China I think it was the Chin-Chin-Wang-chung TV company cranking out TV's the only difference was the stenciled on RCA, Sharp, Magnavox, and Colby names. The TV's were all the same. The bummer thing is I will pay more money for a quality item. I hate that the choices have been made for me buying cheap junk. Plus it angers me to no end seeing once great American company names. Ones associated with a quality product being reduced to a spray painted on decal. I hate those companies that sold out there heritage just to give the CEO a huge bonus. Leaving us consumers with cheap crap. That's why when I find old stuff in good condition I buy it up just to hold on to what was once good. Sorry for the venting.

[jshorva65]

A transcript of a speech given by a prominent official in the Chinese government in too public of a forum was leaked via the Internet some time ago, resulting in this official's loss of his title for having "let the cat out of the bag" about China's plans to conquer the West (starting with Amerrica) for its food production capabilities (land for farming and a population to enslave as at-gunpoint farm workers under Communism) and discussed plans of a massive bioweapon attack aimed at killing enough Americans to beat us into submission for conquest by China. Every one of those Chinese slave-manufactured products feeds the Communist military monster and finances its bioweapons laboratories, but many officials in our own government are wholly bought and paid for with campaign contributions from China laundered through other channels.

I have a still-working-like-new "Assembled in Greenville, TN" Magnavox 25" stereo monitor set with PIP in the small home theater setup in my living room. The thing is as old as my child, but the set is well maintained. I also have two "roundie" color sets in my personal collection along with many early postwar B/W sets. No plans of buying a new set any time soon here, even after conventional NTSC format is phased out as a broadcast standard. The quality of today's programming is so intolerably filled with anti-American propaganda that I don't even recall the last time I watched an entire program before turning off the set in disgust after enduring one too many racist stabs at my European heritage in the show's dialogue.

Yes, I drink beer from a bottle and watch partial NASCAR races just to keep track of the curreent leader. I also have two Technology degrees. I'm proud to be an intelligent AND educated REDNECK. lol Incidentally, "Redneck" is a reference to the "farmer's tan" which is a product of working outdoors ... NOT a reference to a predisposition to commit murder by lynching as some well-financed poverty pimps seem to insist.

My earliest "roundie" memories involved Sunday afternoons at my grandparents' house, three '66 Zenith color sets tuned to three different football games, and fried chicken made using my family's own secret recipe. I was also a huge fan of "Lost in Space" and recall watching syndicated reruns of the show's second and third season color episodes on one of those sets during other visits. As for my family having three '66 Zenith color sets in 1969-70, what can I say. We owned a trailer park. Grandma's brother owned a restaurant / bar in town, known for the same fried chicken recipe, and his three children each operated restaurant-only locations in the suburbs. I come from a long line of micro-entrepreneurs who fled Eastern Europe just before the descent of the Iron Curtain which trapped many devout Christians like my own ancestors who were not quite so fortunate as to realize that the 1905 attempt to overthrow the (not perfect, but far more merciful than the Bolsheviks) Czar would be repeated and thus begin to plan their escape to the religious freedom for which America was once known.

After I had moved 40 miles away to attend college in the 80's, the still-working sets got sold to tenants who couldn't afford new color sets because my grandparents weren't getting around as well and bought new Magnavox sets with remote control.

[Captain Video]

Originally Posted by jshorva65

A transcript of a speech given by a prominent official in the Chinese government in too public of a forum was leaked via the Internet some time ago, resulting in this official's loss of his title for having "let the cat out of the bag" about China's plans to conquer the West (starting with Amerrica) for its food production capabilities (land for farming and a population to enslave as at-gunpoint farm workers under Communism) and discussed plans of a massive bioweapon attack aimed at killing enough Americans to beat us into submission for conquest by China. Every one of those Chinese slave-manufactured products feeds the Communist military monster and finances its bioweapons laboratories, but many officials in our own government are wholly bought and paid for with campaign contributions from China laundered through other channels.

Every time I read a newspaper article marveling about the "amazing chinese economic growth" I feel extremely disgusted. It's easy to grow like that, exporting extremely cheap ( because they were built with slave/or extremelly underpaid labor ) no-quality and even fake products to the rest of the world, whose governants are on the payroll of the "Secret Government" that is really running this planet, a Secret Government who wants the flood of chinese goods all around the world...for what purpose, I still don't know, but clearly is not for the good of the citizens of this planet. It's not even good for the people of China, because the economic boom there is a result of exporting, not a result of creating a strong internal market. I've read that only 20% of the chinese population have a good standard of living, the other 80% are still living like in the sinister times of Mao Tse Tung.

My wife bought an MP3 player a few weeks ago. As I was distracted, looking at the other merchandise in the store, I didn't help her ( who has little knowledge of electronics ) on her buying. Big mistake. That blasted thing was "Made in China" , and, as you can imagine, it was a piece of crap. Never worked right. We tried to send it to an authorized technician, only to find out that no one was repairing these things anymore. The only authorized tech that could do it, had just quit working with that brand. Luckily, the store agreed to exchange that MP3 for other products, and we were able to made a very good deal, giving them that awful chinese piece of junk, and taking home in exchange some nice dishes for the kitchen, some nice big glasses to drink soda and a few titles on DVD, including Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. However, the store was not completely honest, as they put that MP3 for sale again, hoping to deceive some other poor fool...

I believe that people should vote for politicians who are in favor of protectionism. All this "international free trade" system seems to be doing more harm than good. In America, it's destroying the middle class; here in Brazil, which have always been a country with big social problems, it's destroying the few pockets of prosperity that used to exist here. We had the biggest toy factory of Latin America, "Brinquedos Estrela" ( "Star Toys" ) founded in 1937 by Jewish immigrants. For decades, they produced quality and high-quality toys at affordable prices, and paid decent wages to their workers. Then, in 1990, the new government decided that Brazil should embark on all this globalization-free-trade nonsense, and opened all the gates to widespread, uncontrolled, low taxation imports, and that factory was literally crushed. They survived, but are no longer the giant they used to be. Most of the toys they sell today under their brand are in fact chinese made toys rebadged with the old "Estrela" logo. They became more an importer than a real factory. Other smaller toy companies were not so lucky and closed for good. Today, you see a lot of cheap low quality chinese made toys in the hands of our children, and when I mean cheap I really mean cheap, they can be bought for almost nothing. In a country that desperately needs the creation of jobs, such policies should be considered treason. On a final note, that Jewish family is no longer the owner of the factory. They sold it years ago, after the devastation made in their business by the chinese imports. A friend of mine, who, like myself, is a TV collector, entered their mansion a short time ago, because they were making a huge garage sale. Everything in that huge house ( according to him it resembled Scarlet O'Hara mansion from the movie "Gone With the Wind" ) was for sale. He was able to score a 1954 Dumont TV set, that they bought new in a trip to the USA in 1954. It probably is the only Dumont television set in Brazil, because unlike other companies like GE or Admiral, Dumont never had a factory or import representative in Brazil.

[andy]

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[peverett]

Corporations are not generally good at adapting to the future. How many companies can you name that have been around for 75+ years? The only ones that come to mind in the electronics field are IBM, GE, Motorola, and possibly Hewlett Packard. What has happened in electronics is as the old corporations have died, new ones (TI-1947, Intel-1970, Apple-1977, AMD-1970s) develop to take their place. The complete list of recent corporations would be quite long. All of the above mentioned recently formed companies did develop new technology in the US. Some continue to do so. In fact, Motorola(an old line company) essentially developed the entire cellphone industry. The fact that the latest TV displays were not developed in the US does not indicate that innovation is dead here. In fact, I would propose that most of the HDTV specification and algorithms are from US sources.

Also remember that foreign corporations also stumble-look at how Sony is doing these days.

If you think that this lack of forsight is only in electronics, just remember Studebaker, American Motors, Packard, De Soto, Hudson, etc.

[andy]

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[ChrisW6ATV]

Unless we in the USA want protectionist laws, the changes in industries are almost always going to be due to consumer choices. How many of us really still buy most of our hardware, paint, and tools, for example, at a local hardware store rather than at Home Depot or Lowe's? The word most there was important, because if we make our big shopping trips to the "big-box" stores and just get the occasional screwdriver or couple of bolts at the neighborhood store, it is "our own fault" when the little store closes.

Did you know you can still buy gym shoes (or "sneakers"/"tennis shoes" depending on where you are) that are Made in USA? They are in many stores, too-they are New Balance brand. Now for the kicker: They cost about $100-$120 a pair for the US-made ones. New Balance also has its $30-$60/pair shoes, and they are made in China like all of Nike's shoes, and other brands. So, in a few cases at least, we still have the choice to "Buy American", but we have to be willing to pay for it.

Also, I do not understand the singling out of Wal-Mart for driving manufacturing out of the USA. Wal-Mart, as far as I know, has only truly been a huge force in U.S. retailing for maybe the past 15 or maybe 20 years (since it expanded from only rural areas into the cities and suburbs), but the shrinking of U.S. manufaturing has been constant and continuous for 40 years. (Remember Mattel "Hot Wheels" cars? They came out in 1967, and they were made in Hong Kong.) You can buy things like Sterilite plastic bins at Wal-Mart, and they are as American-made as a Hollywood movie.

[Whirled One]

Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV

Unless we in the USA want protectionist laws, the changes in industries are almost always going to be due to consumer choices. How many of us really still buy most of our hardware, paint, and tools, for example, at a local hardware store rather than at Home Depot or Lowe's? The word most there was important, because if we make our big shopping trips to the "big-box" stores and just get the occasional screwdriver or couple of bolts at the neighborhood store, it is "our own fault" when the little store closes.

You're absolutely right. The reason why there are no American companies left that make TVs (or any number of other products) is because we really can't compete on price. Go back to the late-70's to 1980 era (about the last years there were several TV manufacturers in the USA), and look how expensive TVs actually were compared with today. According to the 1978 Admiral dealer catalog, the *cheapest* 19" color TV (a basic table model) had a list price of $399.95 and dealer net of $314.55. That's roughly $1240 and $975 in today's money according to the CPI Inflation Calculator. The cheapest 25" color TV (a console in simulated walnut) had a list price of $609.95 and net price of $494.25. That's about $1890 and $1530 respectively in 2007 dollars.

Today, you can walk into any discount chain store and buy a new 19" color TV (such as those typically made by Funai in China) for under $100. I don't think you can still buy an NTSC-only 25" or larger TV any longer, but when they were last still offered, they could be bought for as low as around $150. Anyway, using the 19" set as an example, if you went to the store and saw a Chinese-made 19" color TV for $100, and a USA-made 19" color TV next to it for $1200, which do you think most people would choose? ...Especially if the $100 TV had a full-function remote control, cable-ready tuner, A/V input jacks, closed-caption decoder-- all of which were lacking in the $1200 TV. Granted, this is a gross exaggeration-- obviously, today an American company could build a modern 19" color TV to retail for a *lot* less than $1200, but think about it-- how can anybody make money selling a (relatively) large CRT color TV set for under a hundred bucks?? After all, the dealer and the manufacturer have to make something on the deal, and there are lots of overhead costs (including shipping/transportation) that are included in the price of the TV that have nothing to do with the manufacturing itself. Even with the slim margins on electronics that mass-retailers generally work with, and even with factory-direct shipping to the retailer, that $100 TV set must have had to cost less than $60 to produce at the factory, including all materials, labor, rent/property, machining/tooling, and taxes. Yow!
That's why we don't make stuff like that in the USA any longer.

In consumer electronics, this trend really started with transistor radios in the early 1960's. Within just a few years, there were hardly any small transistor radios made in the USA. Who was going to buy an American-made transistor radio when you could buy a Japanese-made one for half the money, and worked about as well? The American manufacturers didn't mind either, since little transistor radios had quickly become such a low-profit-margin commodity anyway-- it was easier to make money with high-ticket items like color TVs anyway, and it's not like the Japanese companies were going to actually be able to build a decent big-screen color TV anytime soon, right? Now even Japan has lost that market to China and other nations.

Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV

Also, I do not understand the singling out of Wal-Mart for driving manufacturing out of the USA. Wal-Mart, as far as I know, has only truly been a huge force in U.S. retailing for maybe the past 15 or maybe 20 years (since it expanded from only rural areas into the cities and suburbs), but the shrinking of U.S. manufaturing has been constant and continuous for 40 years.

Exactly. Also, my experience has been that Wal-Mart has generally been much better than other mass-retailers at trying to carry American-made products when possible. I also collect cameras, and the last two American companies that still made consumer-grade cameras in the USA (aside from some disposable cameras) were Polaroid and Keystone. Polaroid gradually shifted production away from the USA and the UK, with some models starting out as USA- or UK- made but then shifting elsewhere over time. A big example was the preennial OneStep 600 in its various guises. I think it was during its run as the "OneStep 600 Flash Close-Up" when I started seeing it shift production locations, but perhaps it was the earlier "OneStep 600 Flash" model. Anyway, it started out appearing to be entirely USA-made (at least those for the USA market), but then I started noticing in the stores ones that were instead made in Mexico or China (I'm thinking there may have also been some Brazilian ones or something too). I started watching this more closely and noticed that pretty soon Wal-Marts were the only store that still generally had USA-made OneSteps, while Target and K-Mart and such had only the Mexican and Chinese ones. I believe the last USA-made Polaroid camera was the Captiva (and as far as I know, all Captivas were made in the USA), and Wal-Mart was by far the last of the big mass-marketers that continued to carry the Captiva even after it had ceased being much of a big seller. Wal-Mart was also the last big chain store that I saw consistently carrying the Keystone line of point-and-shoot cameras when they were still made in the USA. Then there was the time 5 or 6 years ago when I went out to get a toaster. Nothing fancy, just a plain-ol' pop-up toaster. I planned to buy a Toastmaster pretty much for 'historical' reasons, but also because I figured it was still made in USA. Went to Target, and aaaaaah-- what's this..? They had Toastmasters, but they were made in Mexico..? They also looked more 'curvy' and bulkier than the last Toastmaster toasters I had seen in a store. When did that change, I wondered. I checked all the other toasters, and they were all made in Mexico or China. Went to K-Mart, same thing. Went to Wal-Mart, and what do you know-- they had USA-made Toastmaster toasters. They also had USA-made Proctor-Silex toasters. ...And they weren't any more expensive than the Mexican and Chinese made ones at the other stores (though they had the more squared-off lines of an earlier generation of toasters). In fact, they had a nice end-cap display of the USA-made Toastmaster toasters with a free box of Pop-Tarts packed right in the box. ...Not a coupon for free Pop-Tarts, mind you, but an actual box of Pop-Tarts packed right with the toaster. ...And all for about ten bucks. [Would a tie-in like that even work out well if the toaster was built and packaged overseas..?] I checked Wal-Mart several months later, and sure enough, no more USA-made Toastmasters. I think they may have still had USA-made Proctor-Silex toasters, but nowadays I don't think any of them are made in USA, and the last time I noticed, Toastmaster toasters were all made in China. So apparently I now have one of the last USA-made Toastmaster toasters... Kinda sad, really.
Oh, and as far as I know, Wal-Mart was also one of the last mass-merchandisers that still consistently carried USA-made Westclox ("Big Ben") alarm clocks (which are now made in China), and Wahl electric shavers (I think they still make hair-cutting and other grooming equipment, but not shavers).

Anyway, this isn't supposed to really be a gripe/complaint about non-USA products or the sellers thereof-- it's all really a result of the world we live in today and the realities thereof...

[Pete Deksnis]

Originally Posted by Whirled One

...American manufacturers didn't mind either, since little transistor radios had quickly become such a low-profit-margin commodity anyway-- it was easier to make money with high-ticket items.

I can confirm that. A GE public relations guy fixed that in my young Editor-head in the early seventies when he said "...sure, we can set up a line to make transistor radios at a profit. But why?"

[bgadow]

As the thread proves, there are many sides to the story. Chris makes the good point about where you do most of your shopping. 20 years ago in our small town, most people, as they had for years, bought their groceries, their medicine, their hardware, cars & trucks, and yes, tv sets, here in town. The big-boxes were not yet convenient and so there was little reason to go to another town to go shopping since you could get everything here. One by one the small mom & pops closed because it was too easy to shop elsewhere. For one thing, hardly anybody works here anymore. It is now a bedroom community. It was heartbreaking to watch the local grocery store go out of business. Years ago you would go in there and they would have 2 or 3 checkout lanes open, 3 or 4 people deep, with carts loaded. In later years, after big new supermarkets had opened 10 minutes away in all directions, you would go in there and find one register open, and nobody ever had a cart full. This pushed them into a downward spiral as they could not afford to keep the shelves full, which turned away shoppers who couldn't find what they needed. I went in there the day they closed and tried to fill a basket with stuff just to help them out. There wasn't enough left to do it.

Well, I guess I'm straying too much here...Americans have never been good at buying American when American stuff cost more. (not in modern times, anyway) We gripe about plants closing but I would say a very tiny percentage of people pay attention to where something is made. Sometimes it takes quite a lot of effort to buy American...you may have to stop in every store in town. I have done such searches in the past for things like an electric can opener, a waffle iron, a telephone, a camera. The telephone was frustrating as the website said they were made in Mississippi but the one I got came from China. The camera? That was in the mid-90s and I must have looked at 100 cheap cameras to find that Keystone, on the shelf at a small Woolworths.

The consumer electronics industry has been through many cycles over the years. There was the telephone, the phonograph, the radio...in each case there were a few pioneers, then hundreds or thousands of companies popped up. The market culled out those with an inferior product, or poor business plans. Starting with radio, as time went on the market got saturated. After a time everyone had at least one radio so to stay in business you either had to convince them to buy something better as a replacement or sell them a second set. By the 40s the radio business might have collapsed down to only 3 or 4 makers but then along came television. A television was like a high-end radio and was an excellent profit maker. And they sold like hotcakes. TV was a shot in the arm for most radio makers, and many new companies jumped on the bandwagon. But by the mid/late 50s everyone who was going to have a TV had one. Again, the makers had to either offer up something new (bigger screens, modern styling, portables) or go out of business. The TV business started to suffer. Color TV would be the savior, but it would take some time to come. Many companies left the business. When color did become serious in the mid 60s it was, again, a shot in the arm for those who had managed to hang on. Eventually, though, the market was again saturated-there was almost nobody else left to sell a first color tv to. So, what was new and exciting? Solid state? Yeah, that brought a few sales. Modular chassis were not enough by themselves. Modern remote control sold some sets. But mostly the market needed to find "the next big thing". RCA thought it would be the CED. Zenith put a lot of effort into early HDTV, as I recall, but it ran out of steam. I think if HDTV had come along in the 80s it would have helped RCA/Zenith/GE/NAP continue to be real players for another decade. Instead they were just in the business of selling a commodity, something no more exciting or "new" than a can opener or a waffle iron or a cheap camera. By the time the technology was ready the American consumer electronics giants were all washed up. I remember that back in the 80s the owner of the local TV shop said that someday we would have flat tv sets that hung on the wall and sattelite dishes the size of serving plates. Well, he was exactly right. It just took too long to happen to save his business or the industry.